Local area radio systems may be designed to complement existing wide area cellular systems, such as global system for mobile communications, GSM, universal mobile telecommunications system, UMTS, high-speed packet access, HSPA, or long term evolution, LTE. Unlike wide area cellular systems, local area radio systems can utilize the license-exempt spectrum or unused spectrum between TV channels, white spaces, to take advantage of the additional available bandwidth in these spectral resources. In addition, local area radio systems offer an efficient device discovery mechanism that provides availability information of devices in the proximity. The beaconing mechanism is generic and it may carry information for several purposes. For instance, the mechanism may be applied for inter access point, AP, signaling, to negotiate network configurations and to coordinate frequency and power utilization of the network.
One possibility is to use the beaconing mechanism to establish device-to-device, D2D, operation. D2D operation provides means to initiate data exchange between devices in the coverage area by establishing ad-hoc or mesh networks, or to enable direct transmissions between devices. D2D beaconing enables devices to discover each other and exchange information on their capabilities and offered services. D2D beaconing also provides a mechanism to initiate data exchange between the devices. The D2D beaconing is targeted to be available, even when the D2D beaconing devices are not associated with any network, to enable device discovery and the direct transmissions between devices.